Fashion modelling's biggest face from the 80s; Yasmin Le Bon speaks wheels, and why women petrol-heads need more noticing
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Yasmin Le Bon walks into a sunlight-soaked balcony at Jaipur's Rambagh Palace, sharp on time, wearing no make-up, looking crushingly magnificent and certainly not a 54-year-old who is grandmother to nine-month-old Taro Arturo Le Bon.
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It takes a moment to accept that you are standing before one of the highest earning supermodels of the late 1980s, somebody who worked with every big name from Karl Lagerfeld, Versace and Chanel to Dior and Azzedine Alaïa, and married Duran Duran's lead singer Simon Le Bon in 1985. She sits, her endless legs crossed in front of you, ready to talk about her role as judge for Cartier Travel with Style Concours d'Elegance. "It's a bit like a beauty contest for automobiles," she says, her face lighting up. "When you judge, it's emotional, it's visceral. [You choose] cars you desire or cars that make you smile, or a story of amazing restoration, incredible mechanical achievement and innovation."
Model David Gandy with Yasmin Le Bon
Born in Oxford in 1964 to an Iranian father and English mother, Le Bon grew up aspiring to be a racing driver. "Who doesn't want to be that? In my dreams, I still probably do, but I am too old for it now [laughs]. Actually, a friend in England is pressing me to do historic racing, so you never know!"
The first car she fell in love was the Ferrari Dino 246, and it's the classic Lamborghini Miura that she hopes to own. Her ability to appreciate the story of a car's birth and journey shines when she speaks of the Ambassador, the four-door sedan with an original Made in India legacy. "My daughter [Amber Rose] and I were just saying [the other day] that there's a wonderful charity event called Elephant Family, and the next time, we should do it in an Ambassador, which would be fun. That's the car [Ambassador] that's changed, like a lot of automobiles, the shape of culture. That's a car with tremendous heritage."
Over the years, Le Bon has judged a variety of vintage auto shows, including Villa d'Este Concorso d'Eleganza. She has driven the Jaguar XK120 with co-pilot David Gandy at the rigorous Mille Miglia race, and has been on the Cartier Travel with Style Concours d'Elegance panel since its inception in 2008. In fact, it was to attend its debut show that Le Bon first visited Mumbai. "We had a jolly good time, it has to be said. I kind of liked it [the city], felt sort of old-fashioned in a good way. We went to some cool bars, and oh gosh, I met Shah Rukh Khan."
When Le Bon began her three-decade-long modeling career, with a break in 1983 with Models 1, conversations about diversity were not commonplace. "When people booked me, they thought they were being alternative. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin… I looked mixed race, but no one quite knew what. They were only a handful of us, and things had really changed, but at the end of the nineties, it stopped. I felt frustrated, like the world had stopped evolving. Today, it's [diversity] not a conversation. We have only just put our toe through the doorway, this is just the beginning."
The automobile industry is not too far from the bias either, Le Bon says of the male dominated world of petrol-heads. "I talked my way into it years ago. I might not have deep mechanical knowledge but I have knowledge, and I have been following classic cars my whole life. I am never without a classic car magazine; it's just ridiculous, everybody laughs at me."
Each time she is invited to judge, and if she's the only woman on the jury, she insists on getting another sista onboard. "Because you know, they are out there; so many female engineers, mechanics, collectors, designers, campaigners. We just haven't been represented."
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